ShillyShallying
by Narroch
Summary: Edward faces the ultimate decision. When he meets the homunculus he is forced to make up his mind...even if he has to be called a murderer. This contains spoilers for episode 22, repost.


Envy, jealousy, the green eyed monster that doth mock the meat it feeds upon…

Its very incarnate was staring down at the crimson gold boy. Staring hungrily, insanity flickering with a slightly subdued gleam in the violet slanted eyes. An insanity that had been germinating under a centuries worth of humorous deception until something set it off. Made it peek its crazed snarling head out from the bowels of the sin's tainted interior. Seeing the son of his loathed enemy, the man who created him, killed him, that bastard called Hoenheim of Light…

Envy hated him.

Seeing a living creature sharing his golden hair, eyes of the sunrise, his very blood…brought the insanity beast out in its full crushing force.

Edward struggled up to his feet only to be cruelly kicked in the face, spinning him in a sickening but mesmerizing free-fall dance, until gravity laughed and slammed his lithe body into the extremely hard stone floor. He gasped as the tendrils of burning pain squirmed their way into the limbs which took the full brunt of Envy's assault. He coughed up a small splatter of blood, the life giving liquid leaving a bitter metallic taste on his panting tongue.

Envy crouched down to his level, balanced lightly on the balls of his feet. The insanity out in blatant view only seconds before had been ushered away with practiced detachment. Now he leaned over, haughtiness perched on his face as he started down his nose at the boy glaring bloody daggers at him.

"You will make the Philosopher Stone for us." he stated nonchalantly. Ed's eyes widened at that simple sentence, fully understanding how truly dangerous the hidden message was… But wasn't that what he and his brother had been searching for all this time? Edward had already been through _that_ denial game, too appalled to even consider all their effort and sacrifice was a waste. So they continued forward. But now this ultimate power was before him. It could bring back their natural bodies, no equivalent trade or balanced equations necessary…But were their original bodies worth the forfeit of a sickeningly large amount of lives? These pitiful criminals before him were still human. Yet it was their very human existence fraught with sins that had led them inexorably to this place.

Ed could still hear Al's whispered gasps of pain as Lust playfully caressed his blood seal with elongated razor fingers. That small patch of hemoglobin was the only thing tying Al's soul to this realm, and the buxom sin was slowly chipping it away. Hearing his brother's pain laced whimpers caused a panic derived logic to fill his brain, dissolving his resolve as quickly as a footprint beneath a salty wave. Losing form, becoming a homogeneous texture, the once clearly defined dent that symbolized his beliefs and morals was becoming indistinguishable. And so with a bowed head and faltering ethics, he pulled himself up and trudged over to the archaic alchemic design tattooing the floor and cradling the sacrificial convicts.

Al saw his brother step reluctantly towards murder and screamed at him to stop, begging him to realize the wrongness of what he was about to do, saying over and over that dealing out death would not make him happy.

He cried.

He cried out of nonexistent eyes when he saw his words have no effect on the silent alchemist. He screamed out all the frustration at being helpless. Hating how his own misfortune forced his brother to commit such a vile act. What was the use of a metal body impervious to fatigue, hunger, and disease, if he could be rendered so quickly and utterly powerless? This so called immortality was useless if one simple crack could efface his entire existence. And so he poured all these emotions into his rhetoric, certain somehow that his words would reach across the abyss separating them and that his sibling would wake up from the madness and then everything would be alright.

But Ed did not stop.

He did not turn around.

He did not even look at him.

Instead he kneeled in defeat and tapped his hands together. Slowly, ever so slowly he lowered the charged fingertips to the floor, knowing that as soon as he made contact there would be no second chances.

He had gotten lucky with his mother's attempted revival, but knew with absolute certainty that the bedraggled men before him would be dead and he would be a murderer.

_How far am I willing to take this charade of life?_

His hands dropped, and at the same moment the face of ultimate evil arose in the form of a eerily familiar golden door, one that swarmed with malevolence and madness.

_Welcome... Little Brother..._

-

This was my first fanfic posted way back in 2005. I edited it and reposted it because of very obvious grammatical flaws and complete unprofessionalism. It is much better now, and if you reviewed it the first time, wow thankyou. It still has no real structure to it unfortunately, just sorta wanders through the episode. It was the best I could do back then. XD


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